Van Halen: VH1

In one breathless take, after a short, bombastic intro with Alex and Michael Anthony, Eddie released an unbroken ribbon of scales, bends, dive bombs and hammer-on classical-sounding arpeggios. As he did in all of the band’s songs, Eddie tuned down a half step (this was done both to accommodate Roth’s vocal style and to give the guitar sound more teeth). The only effects that were used were an MXR Phase 90 and a Univox EC-80 echo box (the latter of which was housed in an old WWII bomb shell that Eddie found in a junkyard). One minute and forty-two seconds after the tape started rolling, Eddie pulled his vibrato bar up after a long, descending growl and “Eruption,” as it was now called, was complete. Templeman and the band were elated, but Eddie was chastened. “I didn’t even play it right,” he later remarked. “There’s a mistake at the top end of it. To this day, whenever I hear it I always think, Man, I could’ve played it better.” Eddie would soon make one more screw up, only this wouldn’t go down so well. With the album still months away from release, he went to the Rainbow Bar & Grill and hung out with members of a fellow Sunset Strip band called Angel. As alcohol flowed, drummer Barry Brandt began to brag about the forthcoming Angel record. Eddie, flush with pride over the album he had just cut, responded in kind. When the party moved to Brandt’s house, Eddie, hell bent on blowing everybody’s mind, put on a tape of Van Halen—and jaws were dropped. Eddie thought nothing of it—for weeks he had been playing the tape for his friends—but when he got a call from a furious Ted Templeman, informing him that Angel were in a studio frantically recording their own version of “You Really Got Me” with the intention of beating Van Halen to the punch, he realized the magnitude of his mistake. As a consequence, Warner Bros. had no choice but to rush-release Van Halen’s version of the song. (It should be noted that Angel would soon join Piper in the Oblivion bins at record shops.) There were no riots in the streets, nobody threw anything (except guitars out of windows), but it’s safe to say that from the moment people dropped the needle on Van Halen and heard what seemed to be some sort of air-raid alarm (actually, it was the band members’ car horns synced together and slowed down to ominous effect) they were in a state of shock. A new movement was taking place, and Van Halen, with a bratty authority and a rapacious sense of purpose not heard since the debut of Led Zeppelin, were leading the charge. A nearly flawless piece of pop art, Van Halen is one of those great rarities in music, at once simple and sophisticated, distilling the band's prodigious chops and party-hearty aesthetic into hummable melodies that took hold of one’s senses and didn’t let go. “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love,” “Jamie's Cryin,’ ” “Runnin with the Devil,” “I’m on Fire”— there isn’t a bum track to be found. As both singer and carnival barker of sorts, David Lee Roth made all the right noises: surprised whoops, leering come-ons, testicle-gripping screams, hollers of “whoa now” and the like—the full panoply of orchestrated letme- entertain-you shtick. Alex Van Halen and Michael Anthony more than held up their respective ends, providing a prizefighter’s punch and, in the case of Anthony, background vocals that sailed in the air and served as the perfect counterpoint to Roth’s gruff voice. Of course, there was Eddie. Of all the young guitarists who ever issued a debut record, he’s the one who delivered on promises he never had to make. Dispensing with the usual wobbly preamble of a flawed but ambitious first record, he burst through the gate as a musician who valued substance and emotional contact over mere technical flash. With poetry in his heart and a panoramic vision of where he was headed, he never had to develop into something special, for he was already there. Being thrust into the pantheon of greats at such a tender age (he was 22 at the time) and so early in his career can be ruinous to most musicians, but Eddie’s extraordinary energy and thirst for innovation proved to be invaluable strengths. Guitarists the world over saw the rashness and speed of his gifts and emulated him in a way that no musician has ever had to endure. “Eruption” was and continues to be a litmus test for budding axslingers—what Frank Zappa’s “The Black Page” is to drummers, so, too, Eddie’s tour de force is to guitarists. But it’s also a cul-de-sac, for no matter how hard everyone tried to catch up to Eddie Van Halen, he was burning up the ground as fast as he could run. Thirty years on, it continues unabated. ❒

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